At the Intersection of 30th and J: Ruthron Hyperbole

Like a kick to the balls in the eye

2007-02-06T20:39:00.000-05:00

My father worked just up the street at the brand new grocery Superstore. It had super savings that brought the people of Lancaster the unthinkable: rentable VHS machines! and larger ilses, which made it the more unfathomable people still ran into each other with their carts. But in this greater-greater Los Angeles suburb, my father's store was the newest and brightest jewel in the proliferating Alberstons' crown. His days were extremely long. He'd work six days a week at roughly ten to twelve hours aday. Therefore, needless to say, it wasn't uncommon to see my father more frequently on the couch or in the store than outside.

2006-12-08T14:43:00.000-05:00

People had called this fascism in the past

2006-05-05T14:50:00.000-04:00

The Boston Globe has a report mentioning several hundred laws that invoking the Commander in Chief card allows one to break...

Does your life ever feel like

2006-05-04T08:53:00.000-04:00

THIS?

A thought...

2006-04-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

this narcissistic-orb-o-verbosity-and-loquaciousness offers a great many who haven't the literary outlite (aside from History, Theology, or Philosophy classes--to name a few) the perfect forum to vent, theorize, and come to findout, date. Now while I tend to write more when the fan base (in which is used as loosely as a post-pregnant mother post-crapping) is shy and on vacation, one must presume that this forum is merely just the ability of the public to look into the most sacred of thoughts and more improtantly, the most inane. Therefore, thinking outloud here, this arena has numerous benefits, although it has a great deal more drawbacks. Case in point is the Weblog. I happen to stumble across this irreverent, heretically charged, collection of apt writers (in more than one language!!!), that I feel ya'll should share in and if for no other reason than to acknowledge the faults that we all knew permeated seminary. Here, is an example of the writing:

So that's what I left. I drove for a long time, probably about five hours. Surprisingly, near Chicago there was a traffic jam. I have strong moral convictions about traffic jams: I believe it is utterly unacceptable for them to happen, ever. As long as traffic jams continue to happen (to me), I will remain deeply skeptical about the superiority of the United States over all previous nations.
Adam Kotsko

And it is there that I believe, unequivocally, that he is the next leader of the children in God's church. The drawbacks of the blog world. Read and enjoy.

Opera Man needs our help

2006-04-14T07:45:00.000-04:00

This guy is Eliot, and when not signing Prokofiev's sixth, is just a simple 4ft 20 month old: he puts his shoes on top of the DVD player like everyone else, likes to bang pots and pans for vocal preperation (and to ensure that his mom has a last nerve), spins on the smooth tile floor using bowls with the best of 'em, and has a laugh that can be heard a mile away, contagious throughout. Unfortunately, he's experienced some rough moments during the past couple of months: an MRI, tubes were placed in each ear to alleviate a constant ear infection, of course with hair so befitting my grandfather he tends to lead with his head minus the little warning devices we call hair, so, he has some bumps and bruises, but yesterday his mother found out some pretty bad news. And while the extent of the news is known only to God, meaning that his condition could either really hinder Eliot's development forever, or it could pose no greater problem than those with learning disabilities. While therapy is a given and in the works, right now the ultimate gift for the two of them is your prayers.

(And if you don't know her, or want to know all there is to know about her, check out this interview at A5 1T 15. it's scandalous!)

Two things:

2006-04-13T08:38:00.000-04:00

First, the post below is truly in a place of indistinction. I deleted it. It's not on my file list. So i can't delete it again. But here it is, still in exsitence. How odd. Oh well. I like the poem, but believe that the ending, while beautifully poignent, borders on, if not resides well within a blasphemous realm. One that i am not willing to enter. Although i do love the line italicized.

And second, the story here says something about the dialectic of the Enlightenment for sure. Here, it wasn't party politics that legitimized the individuals voice--if that is even possible--but a collection of singular voices that disallowed the government the ability to pass a law without the populations consent.

And third, it would seem that our President has been reading Clinton Rossiter's, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, because he is emulating the closing remarks in a beautifully mutilated fashion, "No sacrifice is too great for our democracy, least of all the temporary sacrifice of democracy itself" (314).

And fourth, BASEBALL!!! ANGELS!!! Tim Salmon!! And the Ducks are heading to the playoffs. Life is good in the lovely city of Los Angeles of Anaheim.

When is enough, enough?

2006-04-12T12:08:00.000-04:00

Link to this story:

The New York Times found that mean CEO pay at 200 large companies increased 27 percent in 2005, to $11.3 million. The Times noted that CEO pay at big companies is more than 170 times average worker pay. In fact, this is a major underestimation. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicating an average salary of about $28,000 for a production worker, these CEOs earn on the order of 400 times the pay of ordinary Americans.

While pay for CEOs is rising by double-digit percentage points every year, wages for average workers are falling behind inflation, meaning that real wages are declining. The argument is often advanced that companies cannot afford to pay high wages or benefits to workers—who can be replaced with workers in lower wage countries—even as tens of millions of dollars are routinely doled out to top executives, whose skills are supposedly irreplaceable. Treasury Secretary John Snow recently explicitly defended the pay of CEOs on the basis that their salaries were the product of efficient market forces of supply and demand. “In an aggregate sense,” he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published March 20, “it reflects the marginal productivity of CEOs.”

What is really involved, however, is not differential compensation based on the value added to the company, but rather a massive transfer of wealth from the bulk of the population into the hands of the ruling elite. To keep investors happy, executives oversee job cuts and cost reductions, and if they are successful, stock prices soar and the executives themselves reap the rewards.
The extraordinary rise in CEO pay is part of a long-term trend in which management of major US companies has been increasingly subordinated to the immediate financial interests of Wall Street and the major investors. When profit rates in the United States began to decline in the 1970s, an attempt was made to counteract this tendency with CEOs tasked with pushing through job, wage and benefit costs in order to boost earnings. The trend continues today with individuals such as Delphi’s CEO Robert Miller, who was hired explicitly to implement massive cuts in labor costs to the detriment of tens of thousands of workers.

Where dreams go to die...

2006-04-07T17:13:00.000-04:00

This is beautiful Rwanda with its delicious tea fields, amazing rain forests, and gorgeous vistas. This story, however, demands of us something that we usually only allow stories that have generated themselves on our soil to do, remembrance. 1994 was the year when the world displayed its true apathetic, protective self. Unfortunately, it's happening again, here.

As he says, what will we do?

Education and Impunity: Still for the privileged

2006-04-02T13:46:00.000-04:00

This story, although still under investigation (meaning that, yes, innocent until proven quilty), typifies the continued class privilege that higher education is embued with. And further magnified by the racism that is still present in these elite universities, especially those in poor towns.

On Wednesday night this week, a caller to WUNC's public radio program, "The State of Things," said that Duke treats the town like a plantation.

Needless to say, something needs to change in our institutions of higher education. While this may seem like athletes gone wild, or as the athletic director put, "Unfortunately," Alleva said, "sometimes young men have bad judgment", I believe it be emblematic of something more pervasive within these institutions and the mentality of those that have. And that is a sense of impunity.

The power of the collective voice

2006-04-02T11:11:00.000-04:00

PARIS (AFX) - A majority of French people back further efforts to fight the controversial First Jobs Contract (CPE) after President Jacques Chirac decided to enact the law while suspending its application until key provisions are softened, a poll in today's Le Parisien newspaper said.

The survey showed 54 pct of respondents supported further actions by labour unions and youth organisations against the CPE, against 39 pct in favour of the groups halting their protests.

The law was published today in the government's Official Journal, the formality that puts it into effect.

Opponents of the law have called for nationwide strikes and demonstrations on Tuesday, the latest in two months of protests that have drawn millions onto the streets. Hundreds of people have been arrested amid violence on the fringes of the marches.

Chirac announced his plan to enact but suspend the contract law Friday evening. It was dismissed by unions, student groups and the left-wing opposition, and derided by much of the French press.

The contract, put forth by the government as a youth job creation measure, allows employers to fire under 26-year-olds during a two-year trial period without explanation. Chirac pledged to shorten the period and require reasons for firings.

paris@afxnews.com

When governments seek to furtively pass laws, this response seems appropriate. And as we see, this mass mobalization of various groups defies a commodification of the biopolitic, which strives for the citizenry to exhibit the "good life", but on the contrary, allows for a more organic and unique politcal responses.

la jeunesse française sont dans la zone de la 'indistinction'

à la Barricades!!!

2006-03-25T17:21:00.000-05:00

declare l'étudiant qui revendique (the student protesters).

Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben suggest that as the individual becomes comodified along party lines, their voice is controlled and even silenced. Yet, however, when the individual disallows such an allegience with political controls and responds inkind to momentary governmental injustices, only then can individuals see their power exercised in the collective. While I disagree, on some level, with the violence and destruction of property as a result of the French student protest, I am in complete agreement with their fight and support them whole-heartedly. It would seem that in moments such as these, the true political voice is heard.

Protest is patriotic.

A fun fact*

2006-02-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

*In the United States, there are more Wal-Mart employees (1.3m) than high school teachers.

Now, for those that know me, my disdain for all things Wal-Mart isn't a secret. Actually, it's played on like somesort of joke. "Hey, we got these great lawn chairs today. And they were cheap," says X. (Hypothetically speaking, X will be played by Wendy X.)
"Why X, how much did you pay?" says Y. (Likwise, Y will be played by Cheryl Y.)
X jovially declares, "Why only 10 pesos!!"
Y regurgitates, "WHAT A STEAL!!! From where?"
X lacking diffidence, "Wal-Mart."
And then like the end scene on CHiP's, everyone looks at Joel compelled by the knowledge that in no sooner than the time it took to inhale the appropriate amount of O2 to deliever my Big Box, job mandicating, social circumscription diatribe, they all just laugh. Freaking Ponch, I hate that I'm so predictable. But man, I read that article and the first thing i though was post, poST, POST!!! Predictability. It's a gift. It's a curse. And now, like every time Jon, Getraer, and Grossman made Ponch to look a fool, it's my turn to be the last holdout, look at the camera and laugh.

Futility is funny.

Christ, the boundary

2006-02-23T11:05:00.000-05:00

<<Where does he stand? He stands pro me. He stands there in my place, where I should stand, but cannot. He stands on the boundary of my existence, beyond my existence, yet for me. That brings out clearly that I am separated from my 'I', which I should be, by a boundary which I am unable to cross. The boundary lies between me and me, the old and the new 'I'. [...] At this place, I cannot stand alone. At this place stands Christ, between me and me, the old and the new existence. Thus Christ is at one and the same time, my boundary and my rediscovered centre. He is the centre, between 'I' and 'I', and between 'I' and God. The boundary can only be known as boundary from beyond the boundary. In Christ, man recognizes it and thereby at the same time finds his new centre again.>> (italics mine) -- Christ the Center, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christ in the area of indistinction.

Blizzard Watch '06

2006-02-13T13:16:00.000-05:00

I was reading yesterday, looking out my window as i'm prone to do, and I saw this guy. And as I was sitting there I realized how much I love things of contrast: here, the red umbrella is more than red on white but a symbol of protection from Blizzerd '06! yet I love the intersection of things seemingly mutually exclusive; not unlike the convergence of the sacred and secular; a nice blend of Calatrava's anthropomorphism and the esoteric contrivances of Raushenberg. And while I wrestle with the complexities of this meeting, I rejoice in the beauty created there in.

clearly in the area of indistinction...

2006-02-11T19:33:00.000-05:00

Click here for an interview with a friend who has found that when the sacred and secular converge (as mentioned here) the end result is grace; and a little E.

when we ignore our government...

2006-02-11T10:13:00.000-05:00

Katie spotted this article...

...i guess we have an answer as to why Africa wasn't mentioned in the State of Union address.

2006-02-05T12:18:00.000-05:00

Political Activism or Civil Disobediance: The Marginalization and Commodification of the Church

2005-11-29T22:32:00.000-05:00

The dilemma I find myself contemplating quite often lately is the above title and the role of Christians vis-a-vis the Church. Right now I am of the opinion (sometimes i have them) that the political process and the role of the church in the world, local communities, and one's life, are antithetical to the political process. A process primarily polarized within two camps postualting a self-prescribed veracity in which the left and the right find comfort in the teachings of Christ in general an the scriputres in particular. The conservatives realying upon a perceived moral truth (cf. homosexual marriage, abortion, etc...) as the liberal element portray an ostensibly more socially relevant agenda simultaneously missing the mark completely. However, in the middle of this convoluted political process lies the church. And in this a church divided. However, all along rhetoric is spewed from a politicain's pulpit preaching some facet of christianity when, in fact, it's becoming one of the most divisive elements within the church in recent memory. Consequently, I'm more and more disillusioned with the church and its response to this issue. The divide is so powerful and emotional that I fear my response when all I want to do is be obediant to Christ.

I will not be commodified...

365 and counting...(an old post not published until now, oh joy!)

2005-11-29T22:31:00.000-05:00

and counting and counting and counting...

I left a message on a friend's phone yesterday (who lives in Oregon) and during the message i think i referenced that fact two or three times. I always do that. I'm always weirded out by that fact. Not the need to clarify on someone's automated device their place of existence, but that I, he, others all live in these obscure lands far from the ever browning hills of the Chino. Ok, maybe Portland and Boston are two cities that can hardly be refered to as obscure, but in my youth and even as I stepped trepidly into adulthood (oh shudder at the thought) I never truly believed I'd ever end up far enough away where a jaunt up the black tar paths of the 5, 15 or even PCH, wouldn't lead me home. Now I understand this notion of home is as fleeting and attainable as my attention span but what a comfort it can be. In my grasp, clinched like a child's first catch playing toss with dad, I had this comfort -- this complacency. However, not unlike the grip I used on the fish I caught last summer, as I tried to practice the odd institution of catch-and-release, a good ol' squeeze can kill. This fish was inadvertently killed by its capturer, his liberator. Oh what a paradox; what contrast.

Anyway, today I celebrate three-hundred and sixty-five days of life and study in Boston. Two-hundred and seventy some-odd days to go. So, as i loosen this grip on my life in relation to this preconceived notion of home, i am sufficiently filled with paradox -- comfort in assimilation and/or the transient life. Are they mutually exclusive?
Cheers!!

Younger than i thought

2005-11-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

On this day, in 1972, i was born...

My mother just sent me a card that read, yada, yada, yada...happy 32!!

Huh?!

I Love Snow

2005-10-30T11:22:00.001-05:00

Halloween gone bad...with Zach(not for the squimish)

2005-10-30T11:22:00.000-05:00

I had a couple drinks on halloween eve's eve. Not much else to say about this except, I was the Cold War!!!

A GRE inspired poem.

2005-10-27T19:18:00.000-04:00

to realize my impuissance
a cold, cold bum missing its essence
one could say this about such an imbroglio
"know 'smalls', chones, sous-vetement,
know contentment
no 'smalls,' no chones, pas sous-vetements
no homeostasis,"
on this haunting
this bitterly frigid dawning.
what a fright!!
pantalones void of this 'small'-est delight
crack exposed;
an imperious character deposed;
the ignominious of the clothes.
friends immured no more
in the imprecation i live.
i need to do laundry.

This is for the kids.

2005-10-26T16:28:00.000-04:00

Here is a story about perseverance.